18. HAS JESUS CHRIST A RACE?
The evangelists, who wrote about the birth of Jesus Christ, Matthew and Luke put it clearly that Jesus Christ was born of a Virgin Mary. They also state that she was a young Jewish woman who was still a virgin. The bible tells us that the Virgin Mary became pregnant not by a will of man but by the power of the Holy Spirit. Read Luke 1:35 And the angel answered and said to her, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Highest will overshadow you; therefore, also, that Holy One who is to be born will be called the Son of God.” (NKJV) Jesus Christ was then created in the womb through the power of the Holy Spirit. Others mistakenly think it was God Almighty Himself who came down to Mary. It was the Holy Spirit. Psalm 104:30 concurs with Luke 1:35 when it states: You send forth Your Spirit, they are created.
Since Jesus was born of a Jewish woman, it is an undisputable fact that He Himself had all the Jewish features and traits for he could not in any way look like the Holy Spirit. If Jesus Christ had been in a form of a Spirit there would have been no need for Mary to give birth to Him. Moreover, and most significantly, Jesus would have been invisible to human eye. Therefore only genes and body cells from Mary alone formed Jesus Christ into a human being He was, making Him one hundred percent a pure Jew.
This had caused those who had wished to kill him to be faced with the biggest problem of identifying him among other Jews who were his disciples. Since they did not like to be involved in a case of mistaken identity, they bribed Judah Iscariot to show them who Jesus was among them. Judah had to hug and kiss Jesus in order for His persecutors to be able to catch Him. Read Mark 14:44 The traitor had given the crowd a signal: “The man I kiss is the one you want.” (GNB)
Furthermore a person belongs to a tribe he was born and brought up in, regardless of looks. That is why we now have African Americans. Truly speaking they are Americans and they also know that well. We cannot call them Africans although we fully know their ancestors came from Africa. Children born in America by British people who came to settle there are no longer British, but are Americans. Their language is American English. In South Africa we have White people whose great grandparents settled in South Africa from Europe. We also have Indians whose great grandparents were from India. They are all South Africans now. They need not be fathered by the natives or be born of the native South African women to be South Africans. Since Jesus was born of a Jewish woman in Bethlehem of Judea, He then is the Jew.
There is something which strikes me most when it comes to the Israelis. They are unique no matter what. They, like the Zulus, Xhosas and Swazis, are not named after their continent or land. We have Americans, Africans, Asiatic, Europeans who are named after their lands and continents. Jews are Israelis. They are named after their greatest grandfather Jacob and they are a nation in their land which was once known as Canaan and later on Palestine. Is this not a mystery in itself? Look at their history. It dates back to pre- historic times, which is the time of the creation of heaven and earth as we know it even to this day. In the year 1400 before the era of Christ the Jews were literate enough to record down their history and preserve it for generations to come. Their history is accurate for there are sites here on earth where their historic events actually took place, long time ago.
Christianity is not a white man's religion or Europeans' religion. White people or the Europeans of old never believed in The God of the Christians. They were converted just like the rest of other nations of the world. Christian Religion started in biblical Palestine and was spread from there to the Greek Islands and eventually to Rome by Paul, Peter and John as well as many others who were by then converted to Christianity.
It was the Roman Catholic Church that collected and compiled all the books of the bible. Their monks did an exceptionally splendid work for us all. Under the auspices of Constantine the Great, the books of the bible were canonized. In those days the bibles were only read by the priests of the Roman Catholic Church. The Pope and his priests, when preaching, were at liberty to interpret the scriptures in any way that would serve a specific purpose for requirements needed at that point in time by the Roman Catholic Church. One Roman Catholic priest became bold enough to bring that monopoly of scripture reading to an end. That man was Martin Luther.
Later on, the Protestants came with their canon of biblical books which excluded some of the books the Roman Catholic Church had included. The Protestants became powerful and were in charge of Bible Societies of the world that print Bibles. They then referred to those books as Deuterocanonicals or Apocrypha. The Roman Catholic Church continues to this day to have those books in their bibles. These books are; Tobit, Judith, Esther-Greek, Wisdom of Solomon, Sirach Ecclesiasticus, Baruch, Letter of Jeremiah, Prayer of Azariah and the Song of the three young Men, Susanna, Bel and the Dragon, 1&2 Maccabees, 1&2 Esdras and Prayer of Manasseh.
From Rome Christianity was spread all over the Roman Empire following the decree by Constantine the Great in the year 312. The decree compelled all nations under the Roman Empire to become Christians or suffer persecution? The Roman Empire comprised European countries, British Isles which was England and part of southern Scotland. It also covered Greek Islands, Egypt and its neighbourhood as well as parts of the Middle East. It was the European countries that spread Christianity all over the world. It was also in this way that Christianity reached South Africa.
Black South Africans were converted through missionary work by missionaries from the so called Mainstream Churches. Mainstream Churches are; The Church of England, Methodist Church, Lutheran Church, Presbyterian Church, Missionaries from Scandinavian Countries, The American Board Missionaries, The Salvation Army, The Dutch Reformed Church and The Roman Catholic Church. They built the first schools and hospitals for black people. They preached to primitive black people who had never heard of any religion before. These natives of South Africa were following the dictates of their traditional cultural customs. They would also once in a while do rituals to appease the ancestral spirits or beg them for luck, guidance and protection.
In South Africa the Zulus and the Xhosas for instance, truly speaking, knew absolutely nothing about God. Yet they had their own incorporeal powers that they would honour. The Zulus had Nomkhubulwane the heavenly Princess of the rainbow. Nomkhubulwane was never worshiped. Nevertheless in summer a field was worked by young women who were virgins. They would then plant all sorts of crops therein. That field was called the field of Nomkhubulwane. It was never reaped or harvested. All crops in it were left to be eaten by wild animals and birds. Nomkhubulwane was said to be making the land fertile, livestock to multiply and seasonal rain to fall. She was referred to as The Princess of the Sky. To this day a rainbow in Zulu language is UTHINGOLWENKOSAZANA. Freely translated: THE BOW OF THE PRINCESS. The Xhosa people revered Thixo (Tixo) an insect, the praying mantis.
When the children of the converts, Amakholwa, as well as children of natives who were never converted, mostly Professors at Universities and those with PHDs, write books and engage themselves in religious symposiums; their aim is to try to make African Traditional Cultural Customs and the incantation of the ancestral spirits a religion of some sort of the African people. To make it credible they say Mvelinqangi of the Zulus, Thixo of the Xhosas to mention these two; which are names African people refer God with, are the proof that Africans worshipped God Almighty before the arrival of White people. Zulu names for God which are Nkulunkulu, Somandla, Mdali as well as Mvelinqangi were coined in the days of missionaries in our country. This is what my great grandparents passed on to my grandparents, which my grandparents passed it on to my parents who also passed it on to me. My paternal great grandparents got converted to Christianity in 1847 when The Reverend James Allison arrived at Ndaleni near Richmond, in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa from Swaziland. The evidence that supports their assertion that Zulu names for God, Nkulunkulu, Somandla, Mdali, as well as Mvelinqangi were not known by our ancestors who lived before the arrival of White people in South Africa is that they are not found in Zulu language proverbs, idioms as well as in the praise songs of King Dinuzulu, Cetshwayo, Mpande, Dingane, Shaka, Senzangakhona and all other rulers of Nguni clans. University Professors on the other hand are busy coining more names for God, which our forefathers never knew. Those names are; Mlenzemunye (The One legged one) and Khulukhulwana (The Ancient One). Only those who have been to universities among the Zulu people know of these names.
It is piteous that our learned people, our pride, are the ones who are busy deceiving us all. The problem with them is they do not want to stoop down and get all the information about us from our mostly illiterate grandparents. They are busy studying the hypothesis of White people on how native people of Africa, they call the Bantus, spread all over Africa. White people are frank in calling it a hypothesis, yet our learned take it for an absolute truth. Our diminishing grandparents have something ingenuous to tell us about us. Unfortunately only a few of them are left now and these years are frail and forgetful. The only old people sane enough to tell a person something of the past are those born in the 1940s who in most cases tell of what they learnt from books written by both black and white people.
The children of the converts also made many people to believe that our forefathers could count the months of the year. They gave all the months in a Gregorian calendar Zulu names, our grandmothers and grandfathers never knew. Now they claim that Jesus Christ had neither colour nor race. God in His wisdom knew that if Jesus had to be born in biblical Palestine His gospel would later be easily spread throughout the world and it was just like that.
WHAT CAUSES PEOPLE SO PERTURBED WHEN GOD IN HIS OWN VOLITION CHOOSES A JEWISH WOMAN TO GIVE BIRTH TO JESUS BY THE POWER OF THE HOLY SPIRIT?”
Is God Almighty really the king of kings? Or is God Almighty some kind of a minor? Why are we sticking out our noses into Almighty God's thinking and actions? We are more than presumptuous in our attitude towards God.
Some black people who are agitated by the fact that Jesus was a Jew, when still on earth, have come with their own Jesus they have painted black. They claim Jesus is also a black man. Why? Is it really necessary? Are they driven by egocentrism or stupidity? Jesus Christ was born a Jewish baby, grew up a Jewish boy, started his ministry a Jewish man and was crucified a Jew which was his race for he was born of the Virgin Mary the Jewish woman.
What Jesus Christ expects of us to do as Christians is to believe in him, not in his race. We have to believe that He really is the son of God Almighty. Remember that in heaven all those who believe in Him will be transformed into a new race. A race of angels. John in his Gospel puts it thus: But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, to those who believe in His name. (NKJV) John 1:12 Paul says they will be turned into new beings.
If God Almighty had chosen a woman from Africa or from Asia or any other continent, I am sure His message to all the peoples of the world would not have been spread the way it has been. Surely God Almighty is omniscient.